rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

I've been using G-Technology drives.
--Bob

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

So? What's your point? That indicates to me that Glyph thought/thinks Seagate drives are quality enough for their premium external units. You only know what kind of drive is in an external case if the external drive comes from one of the hard drive makers....Seagate, WD...who sell external drives. Buy an external drive made by a company that is not a hard drive manufacturer and you don't know WHAT is inside.

I have been a computer techie for 30+ years and I can't say I have seen any particular pattern to hard drive failures by brand. Except for the hard drives that Apple put into the second-generation iBooks, which I think were Western Digitals. My school district had hundreds of them, and many hard drive failures. But that is sixteen years ago.

dyximan

With only 10000 photos that should easily fit on a 1TB solid state drive they have no moving parts and I'm told more reliable, Western Digital has been around a long time Look at them. The reason I say that is I have a 160000 photos and that takes 4TB and would be extremely expensive to put a solid state drive, And if you can afford to drives to backup the photos and then take one off site and bring back monthly in the event of damage it home fire etc. I'm presently in the process of backing out my 160000 photos shot in both raw and jpeg and purchased a 10TB hard drive for about 250 but as I stated earlier that in a SSD would be in the thousands.

jrm21

While not as common as CDs or DVDs are/were, there are better optical storage options.

Blu-Ray drives significantly up the storage capacity. Blu-Ray discs drives that can write to 100GB discs are readily available for under $100.

Reliabilty is also claimed to be greatly improved with M-Disc media. I will not be around to verify their 1,000 year claim, but they do claim a different process that uses a stronger laser to physically alter the disc.

I have always used quality media to write on. I've been writing to optical media since the early 90s. I have only had issues with cheap media - those would fail within a year or two at best. All my quality optical media still performs well.

I have no reason to belive that my m-discs will fare any worse. It is likely they will last as long or longer than a spinning drive simply because there are less mechanical parts to potentially fail.

There's upside and downside to all archival systems. The best solution, IMO, is to use more than one method. Keep a backup on a mechanical drive AND write to an optical drive (with multiple disc copies).

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I am not a fan of optical disks at present. I agree that there are more solutions these days that involve optical disks but in my opinion, 100 GBytes is still too small these days. I much prefer the current magnetic or SSD storage solutions.

(1) Optical disks are write once, read many. Once you write your file to your optical disk, that defines the file forever. With magnetic media you can erase an old file and replace it with an updated version. Of course, either way could be considered a feature rather than a bug. With optical media a file can't be accidentally overwritten. With magnetic media it could be.

(2) 100 GBytes is small by today's standards. So your 2 TBytes of data * will need 20 disks. Which of those disks has the data you want? You have to have some sort of cross reference to find things (making searches a two-step process), or else load a disk blindly and see if the data you want are there. With current magnetic media you can fit all your data on one device.

(3) This might be controversial, but media vulnerability can be considered a good thing. You know the medium is vulnerable, so you replicate it to minimize the vulnerability. If the medium is reliable, you might be tempted to depend on a single instance. Of course any medium has some vulnerability, so if it's out front and obvious you will consider it in your planning and mitigate it. If it's advertised as reliable for 1000 years (or even a mere 100 years), you might be lulled into complacency. I have always considered any statement claiming reliability for an extended period to be marketing hype. My cutoff for an extended period is probably something like 10-20 years. That is more in line with technological obsolescence (currently) which should be considered to be a factor in reliability of a medium.

*(my data currently requires 1.8 TBytes of storage, and my data includes all data, not just photos)

jdm Loc: Cape Cod

Thank you all for your generous responses. I find such incredible value in this community. Thanks for all you do!

jrm21

Which, IMO, makes them perfect for photos and videos. I want to archive my originals as they will not change over time. Just like I would store old film negatives and prints (many of which didn't fare as well as some of 30 year old digital files.)

BTW - optical can also endure water, magnets, and being dropped.




Size vs a hard disc is definitely a drawback... along with optical having a much longer time to write the data. Magnetic wins hands-down on that point. Some of that is mitigated with a good backup strategy. The initial burn is the problem. Those 20 discs (2TB) takes a long time.

Subsequent burns, however, are simple. Your original 2TB of photos are already archived. It's only the NEW information that needs to be burned. 100GB/month? Not such a problem anymore.



Not an issue. There are numerous catalog apps available. Mine automatically catalogs every disc I burn. It is fully searchable without having to insert/mount a disc. With enough data (I have hundreds of archive CDs/DVDs/Blu-Rays) the same problem (and solution) exists for any media.



True, but that is also an advantage to multiple, smaller storage discs. Lose or get a bad 100GB disc, and you only lose 100GB of data. Put everything on one device and you lose it all if/when it goes bad. There's something to be said for 5x2TB drives vs 1x10TB drive. Many photographers stay away from the large memory cards for that reason. It's often better to spread your risk over multiple locations.




Agreed, but this should be considered for any media. I don't trust claims and I don't trust a single method. As I mentioned in my original post, multiple backup systems should be employed for the best data security. Any storage method can fail. Being lulled into a false sense of security is a user error issue rather than a problem with any particular media. That's actually the reason I mentioned optical - spinning hard drives shouldn't be the only consideration for a backup strategy.

All my data is on my main system. My main drives are backed up hourly via Apple Time Machine. Each night, every drive is backed up to a spare external drive. All those drives are mirrored each day to a server I recently purchased. That server will soon be backed up to an offsite server. All important data is burned to 2 or 3 copies of optical that are stored offsite. That doesn't count various locations that get backed up to a cloud.

I have no idea if Optical vs Mechanical drive vs Solid State drive will provide longer or better data security
over time. I choose to reduce the risk by using multiple methods. If the data is important, I suggest others do the same.

jrm21

Also meant to mention...

Backblaze publishes regular reliabiltiy reports for various drives. This information may or may not be helpful to someone looking for a backup hard drive:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-q1-2019/

Differernt brand have been mentioned in this topic. The thing is, they are _all_ good brands. The trick is usually finding the right model within that brand. At one time or another, they all have a model or a production run that isn't as good.

11bravo

Heat is the enemy of HDD'S.

1. I really like this external enclosure:
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16817182247?item=9SIA0722KG3221

Have a number of them. Yes, 10 screws to insert a drive (6 on the case, 4 inside for the HDD), but the internal fan is ESSENTIAL. It keeps the drive at a decent temperature even with continuous read/writes for 16 hours (see below).

2. I'm a big fan of 4TB HGST HDD's, initially standard, then NAS. Some in my HTPC have been running continuously for 2 years, basically 24/7/365. Unfortunately, Western Digital has retired the brand. Also use 2TB HGST external 2.5" HDD'S for travel. These too no longer made.

Now use WD 4TB Red's after I ran out of my stockpiled HGST's, but way too early to determine reliability.

3. For Windows, I never use an HDD until it's been provisioned:
A. LONG format, not a quick format

B. Full command line chkdsk:
chkdsk drive_letter: /x /v /r /f /b

C. Full StableBit scan (paid program)

Now, after 16+ hours of reads/writes, I'll use the HDD. My experience, a drive is either DOA, fails quickly, or runs for a long time.

4. Windows: I use 2 paid programs. They overlap some, but each has its strengths:
A. Hard Disk Sentinel: monitors my HDD temps and health. Can set alerts, with audible alarms, on overtemps (user specified); will even shut the computer down. Had an external HDD without a fan, several times, forgot to turn on the desk fan to keep it cool, audible alarm alerted me when it started to overheat. Also keeps track of health using SMART data. Author is very responsive to questions. Packs available; I have it on all my computers.

B. StableBit scanner: also monitors health, with pop-up alerts. I use this to automatically do a surface scan every 60 days (adjustable) on all my HDD's. Monitors temps during scans and will throttle scans if temps exceed your chosen temps. Author very responsive. Packs available; again on all my computers.

Both also handle SSD's appropriately; no need for surface scan.

I prefer making my own external HDD's so I know what's inside and the enclosure has a fan.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I started in IT in 1984 - mostly building engineering and CAD workstations, and later, servers. You pay a premium for a Seagate drive in a Glyph case with a Glyph warranty. None of the Glyph products have longer than a 3 yr warranty. Trust me, if they were putting Seagate Constellations (robust enterprise-quality drives with 5 yr warranties) they wouldn't be selling them for the price they are selling them and they wouldn't be cutting 2 yrs off the warranty. So the point is, you pay more, you are told you are getting more for your dollars, and you aren't getting anything better than anything else. It's all marketing hype.

Oh, and I have opened a fair share of failed WD external drives - they typically use their Green drives - pure junk. It's the principal reason I recommend AGAINST buying your typical drive mfgr's external drive bundles. I have a pretty good idea what you are getting. But more important, I know I am not getting a premium drive at a bargain price.

Apple is the royalty of hype to justify high prices - so I am not surprised that you had a lot of failures with the lower end drives that Apple used to install in their gear. At least they got wise and put mid-range drives -

I have to say I had the best success with IBM drives, and continue to have success with HGST (formerly IBM), and Toshiba. Back in the days of Novell networks, if you opened up a Novell-branded server what did you find? A Toshiba. If you purchased a Core® International, Novell-ready hard drive - what did you get? A rebranded Toshiba at more than 3X the price of a bare drive. I used to have a machine dedicated to compsurf-ing Toshiba drives for use in Novell servers - saving the client some $$ while making myself some $$.

I've been in this game as long as you have - I am surprised you were unaware of this.

So just because Glyph found a drive that they can live with (get away with) packaging into their backup devices and provide a 3 yr warranty, doesn't make it any better than a premium bare drive installed in a case. Or looking at it another way and using your own words - since you ". . . can't say I have seen any particular pattern to hard drive failures by brand" then you can't say that any drive installed in a Glyph case is any better than any other solution. SMH. . .

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Totally agree with everything you wrote - been using Rosewill cases for years. Good stuff. Too bad about HGST.

I think you'll find the Reds just fine - I am running them in my desktop machine - since 2011. Also, if you aren't running RAID, the WD Black is quite good - both have 5 yr warranties with express swap if you experience a failure. Can't say that I've ever used the express swap arrangement, so I can't tell you how good/bad it is, but it's nice to know it's there.

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

Recently purchased a Sandisk 1TB SSD drive for about $135. Don't know what file formats you are trying to store but I prefer SSD's over hard drives but you get more storage for the same amount of money with the hard drives.

10,000 images? Unless you are a pro storing client shoots it would seem to me that you are being very selective in your "keeper shots".

Just sayin.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I'm with you on HGST and WD Red/Black. Toshiba has been good to me as well.

Most of the drives I've swapped from 2008 and later Macs were HGST. None have failed, in all that time. The bulk of drives OWC sells are HGST, WD, Toshiba, and Seagate. I just buy the first three brands, with 5-year warranties. We're currently running OWC SSDs in three Macs... so far, no issues.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

11bravo

Thanks for the "Red" info, though I'm not using the Pro 5 year warranty version, just the standard which has a 3 year warranty. I'm hoping they'll match the HGST'S...

I've always used WD Blacks for my OS's; my HTPC black has 6+ years of power on time. An old Toshiba 300 model has 5.5 years power on time, though I'm a bit hesitant on recent Toshiba drives based on reviews. I've also bought a couple of Seagate NAS drives to try. For scratch data, Seagate Barracudas.

My first home server build (WHS v1, a fine product Microsoft dumped) had 45 TB's: 22 2TB data drives and 1 1TB black. 7 drives in the computer case, with 2 Rosewill 8 bays attached. Not small, but roomy